Restless – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Jed Hart
Writer – Jed Hart
Stars – Declan Adamson, Denzel Baidoo, Ben Crowe, Lyndsey Marshal

While the title refers to the mental and emotional state of the main protagonist, it could equally refer to the audience member watching this gripping thriller.  One can hardly stay still.  The film is nerve-wrecking, but not in a slasher Halloween style or The Silence of the Lambs (1991) way. Instead, it is more in the gentle and all too believable manner, similar to Fatal Attraction  (1987).   It is all so real and intense.  It could be us.

Technically a three-hander, but in reality, it’s the story of its main character.  We focus on a brief period of days in the life of Nicky (Lyndsey Marshal).  She is a recently bereaved, hardworking woman who loves classical music and baking. She has an offspring living far away at college.  She is an empty nester of a certain age – much to regret but much still to live for. She lives in a grim housing estate, probably grim from the outset and now definitely in decline. It is almost a metaphor for contemporary non-metropolitan Britain, but her personal world is rich with dedication to her work and her quiet home life.  She has cocooned herself in a comfort zone to withstand the surrounding pressures of life.  She clearly has a burden of memories to cope with, but she is getting by, day by day.    The arrival of a new neighbour in the abandoned house next door offers the possibility of new life on the street and community.  But that’s when things get out of control.

The neighbour, Dean (Aston McAuley), is what we might colloquially call a ‘head-banger’ devoted to loud music and all-night raves with the dregs of local society congregating night after night to party hard.  We imagine him as a role model for the infamous Tate brothers.  Anyone who has difficulty sleeping will not only identify with the subject but may have to bury their head in their hands.  We can hear the throbbing bass beat sounding through the thin walls – that awful feeling of being kept awake when you have to get up early for work in the morning, and the neighbour’s car alarm is sounding.  One night is bad enough, but when it becomes night after night, it is beyond agony.  If we have shared a flat with an insensitive party head or lived too near a construction site where they build through the night, we can have some idea of the agony of what Nicky is going through.  What shocks us most, perhaps, is the ends she will go to in trying to resolve the situation and realising how, in actual fact, we might do the same. That feeling we all might experience of ‘I’m going to kill the person next door.’ Nicky, trapped in a house with no resale value, surrounded by elderly neighbours unwilling to challenge the rough neighbour, and with no means of redress through the law or local council, is driven to extreme measures to protect her own sanity – a case of becoming insane to stay sane perhaps.

The film is entirely gripping and hugely satisfying to watch, and there are many elements of comedy, made all the funnier because of their credibility.  Driven to extremes, Nicky is actually forced to break free from her post-bereavement loneliness and begin to live again.